Intel Core i7-4950HQ vs Intel Core i7-4610M vs Intel Core i7-4980HQ

Intel Core i7-4950HQ

The Intel Core i7-4950HQ is a high-end quad-core processor for laptops launched in Q2 2013. It is based on the Haswell architecture and manufactured in 22nm. Due to Hyperthreading, the four cores can handle up to eight threads in parallel, leading to better utilization of the CPU. Each core offers a base speed of 2.4 GHz, but can dynamically increase clock rates with Turbo Boost up to 3.4 GHz (for 4 active cores), 3.5 GHz (for 2 active cores) and 3.6 GHz (for 1 active core). A noteworthy feature is the fast integrated graphics unit (GT3e) with eDRAM memory (128 MB, 77 mm², on-package, 102 GB/s).

Haswell is the successor to the Ivy Bridge architecture with improvements on both GPU and CPU performance. The CPUs are produced in 22nm and offer an optimized branch prediction as well as additional execution ports, improving especially the Hyper-Threading performance. Furthermore, new features like AVX2 and FMA should increase the performance in future applications.

Due to these changes, the performance per clock has been improved by about 10 percent compared to Ivy Bridge. Therefore, the performance of the i7-4950HQ is similar to the slightly faster clocked i7-3840QM (Ivy Bridge based).

Intel Core i7-4610M

The Intel Core i7-4610M is a high-end dual-core processor for laptops launched in Q1 2014. It is based on the Haswell architecture and is manufactured in 22nm. Due to Hyper-Threading, the two cores can handle up to four threads in parallel leading to better utilization of the CPU. Each core offers a base speed of 3.0 GHz but can dynamically increase clock rates with Turbo Boost up to 3.7 GHz for 1 active core or 3.6 GHz for 2 active cores. The 2C Turbo clock has not been confirmed yet.

Architecture

Haswell is the successor to the Ivy Bridge architecture with improvements on both GPU and CPU performance. The CPUs are produced in 22nm and offer an optimized branch prediction as well as additional execution ports, improving the performance per clock by 5 - 10 percent. Furthermore, new features like AVX2 and FMA should increase the performance in future applications.

Performance

Compared to the Core i7-4600M, the 4610M is clocked just 100 MHz higher and therefore only slightly faster. However, the i7-4610M is still the fastest dual-core CPU in H1/2014. Even very demanding software or multitasking will be handled easily.

Intel Core i7-4980HQ

The Intel Core i7-4980HQ is a high-end quad-core processor for laptops launched in Q3 2014. It is based on the Haswell architecture and manufactured in 22nm. Due to Hyperthreading, the four cores can handle up to eight threads in parallel, leading to better utilization of the CPU. Each core offers a base speed of 2.8 GHz, but can dynamically increase clock rates with Turbo Boost up to 3.8 GHz (for 4 active cores), 3.9 GHz (for 2 active cores) and 4.0 GHz (for 1 active core). A noteworthy feature is the fast integrated graphics unit (GT3e) with eDRAM memory (128 MB, 77 mm², on-package, 102 GB/s).

Architecture

Haswell is the successor to the Ivy Bridge architecture with improvements on both GPU and CPU performance. The CPUs are produced in 22nm and offer an optimized branch prediction as well as additional execution ports, improving the performance per clock by almost 10 percent. Furthermore, new features like AVX2 and FMA should increase the performance in future applications.

Performance

Thanks to its higher clock rates, the Core i7-4980HQ is slightly faster than the former 4960HQ. However, the Turbo Boost could be limited by the TDP under long-lasting full load, leading to a slightly lower performance compared to Extreme Editions like the i7-4940MX.